


of wells in the desert

by encroix



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 20:44:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/encroix/pseuds/encroix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What makes the desert beautiful...is that somewhere it hides a well."</p><p> </p><p>  <em>He becomes a problem he is unable to solve.</em></p><p> </p><p>How Mako Mori becomes the answer to most of Raleigh's questions, or how the questions don't really matter at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of wells in the desert

**Author's Note:**

> When there is nowhere  
> that you have determined  
> to call your own,  
> then no matter where you go  
> you are always going home.
> 
> Muso Soseki, _on all steps as steps on the way_

Everything in his life is a lesson in momentum: torque and the force of a heavy jaeger footfall; the way human bodies dropping into the ocean with incredible acceleration will sound like whole worlds ripping apart; gravity and its tenuous relationship to people constantly struggling to fly.

He becomes a problem he is unable to solve. What of the bones, the leftover skeleton, now missing a counterpart; and what of the bruises and the jagged raised seams where skin was stitched back together and made to grow again; the blood that gathers in his mouth when he wakes up in the middle of the night to find his teeth have ground into the delicate skin of his cheek in sleep, in a nightmare - what significance does that bear? And what becomes of one when one was only a part? What becomes of something when it is wrenched from that part of itself that defined everything?

He ends up in Alaska.

Runs toward, returns to - whichever you prefer. The packed snow and ice are solid enough under his feet, and it is enough to be a return; it is enough to know that there are still familiar corners of the earth; enough to chase ghosts back to the place where they were once living people.

(…and is it surprising?

The fault of it is only that momentum is natural, if incidental; things fall into place; things knock each other into corners and pockets just because of size and speed and laws of inertia and none of that changes when it becomes people. The laws of the universe will hold.

The laws of the universe - a boy runs away from home by accident, joins an academy by accident, becomes a pilot and learns to think that it is fate, learns to believe that is destiny, loses a brother, loses his blood to the snow and doubts everything, and finds there is nothing but accidents, nothing but incidental motion and brute force that rattles the bones, and how can he move forward?

And the boy: looking at puzzles too long and seeing only circles of light; a dog chasing its own tail to find its future.)

 

 

The end doesn't fix anything. The end is an end.

They wake up in the hospital, connected to metal IV stands holding bags of fluids meant to keep them hydrated, and he opens his eyes to find the ceiling and tastes the salt across the cracked bed of his throat, and thinks _alive again_.

Across the room, she is there. In his head. Moving with a light step and a heavy footfall. He carries her now. Will always carry her the way the moon keeps historic footsteps in its dust.

She raises her head from the bed in the opposite corner, and grins at him. A sly twist of the mouth he recognizes from his own expression. "We did it," she says.

" _Yatta_ ," he replies, and she coughs a laugh. His pronunciation is awful; he knows that, now, too. Carries that.

"Raleigh," she says, and he leans back against the pillow and hums. Looks at the light too long and sees bright spots.

"眞子さま," he replies.

She laughs, and he scratches idly at his wrist, fighting the urge to be near her. To touch her skin.

And in the quiet that follows, the claustrophobic hum of medical machinery and silence, she'll only break it once. Turns her head towards the wall, and asks, "So what happens?"

He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, finding it suddenly dry. The words stick (or were there any words to begin with)? The story, as told before: _me and yancy'd, we'd go out, you know, get a few drinks and just chalk up another kill under our belt_. But now…

That's what kills it. The momentum. The motion.

Across the room, she presses her lips together and folds into herself like a piece of paper. And isn't that a comfort in itself to know that there are still secrets that they can both pretend exist? Doesn't that make it easy to slip away from the fact that he carries her in his head, that she carries him, and there is no escaping each other's voices?

 

 

 

Isn't it easy…

 

the silence?

 

 

 

"What happens," he repeats, trying for the beginnings of an answer. "You celebrate."

"So," she says. "What do you want to do?"

His laugh scratches up out of him. "Sleep."

"Okay," she says. "Then we'll sleep."

His hands open and close, calling for the weight of her body, but he yawns instead, rolling his shoulder.

She turns onto her side, looks directly at him, her hand dangling on the edge of the bedrail. Her fingers thinner than he remembers. The curve of the wrist a slender line. Delicate.

They breathe in tandem for a few moments, and he watches the nervous tic of her fingers against the edge of the bed. In his head, Yancy is laughing. Yelling jeering insults and making fun of him.

He blinks once, and her hair catches the light - the black suddenly a deep brown, the blue gentler. And he hears himself say it with his brother, _fuck it_ , because he and Yancy were always the kind to go throwing themselves off of trees two branches up just to feel the way the fall echoed through their ankles and shins, the kind to go throwing themselves into fights just because it was worth it to fight for something you believed in, the kind to go charging in without a plan because sometimes talent (Yancy's) and ambition (his) were enough.

The IV stand rattles as he shifts to sit up in bed, and she mirrors him across the wide expanse of sterile hospital room tiling.

He says, "Should I…?"

His voice catches, and she beams. Grins at him, shifts further down the mattress. Waits for him to cross the divide.

They fall asleep together like that, her arm tucked around his waist, chin against his shoulder, and his knee pushing against the bedrail with an angry persistence.

 

That night, he dreams of open skies, bright blue, and the arch of her mouth; the way laughter follows her voice; the way joy spills into his mouth when he kisses her, open-mouthed and wanting.

Alaska becomes an open lake, stretching into the ocean, stretching farther than he can see. Sorrows weigh down their pockets like oversized stones and she says _cast_ and he does, reaching his hands deep into his pockets to find loose gravel. Volume is inconsequential here; the further in his hands reach, the more stones he finds. Hers land in the water one right after the other, skidding across the top of the water and scattering.

He keeps throwing.

And throwing.

Until she is finished throwing hers into the sea, until she just watches him, hoping he finds an end to the stones. And his arms grow tired, his hands get scratched, but the stones are still there; the stones still weigh him down; and he shrugs his shoulders, he pulls them out of his pockets as quickly as he can, but it isn't enough, is it?

The line that filters through from a swimming lesson a long time ago: the drowning can pull even the most knowledgable, the most skilled swimmers down to their deaths; fear can make you a wrathful god.

 

 

 

It remains the same principle.

Falling out of trees, falling into the breach, falling in love (and isn't it strange that that was never the mystery that baffled him for months and years? isn't it strange that he knew it as he knew any immediate truth, knew it like a punch to the jaw, a loud and bloody announcement that just is?); he goes to Alaska because he knows Alaska, because lessons always mean having to begin at the beginning, because running away is the same thing as trying to find home, or maybe it means running towards the kind of person he wants to be.

He runs. Subject-verb. Simple enough constructions.

It's everything that happens after, everything that happens in consequence, that he can't fix. There's an old poem he never learnt but still remembers, a relic from Mako's head:

_古池や蛙飛びこむ水の音_

And no matter how hard he tries, he ends up back in that poem, back in Alaska, back in the moment when he falls from the branch but before he hits the ground. There's no wall to work on, and he's a national hero, so for a while, he just volunteers to help with the logging. There's work that needs to be done pushing back the forest line along the edge of the coast, trying to keep the kaiju blue as far away from everyone's food supply as possible.

He likes the work. The movement of the axe, the loud noise it makes when it lodges soundly in the trunk of a tree. A two-part gesture, resistance both ways, nature fighting him at every step.Everything is

 

Mako comes with him. Wrinkles her nose at the cold, at Alaska, at the nasal accents and the way people talk to her.

He writes the lines of the poem down on a napkin over a cheap lunch of bologna sandwiches and warmed-over potatoes, and pushes it towards her. Jabs at it with his index finger. "That's what… I've been trying to tell you," he says.

And she looks curiously at his messy slanted writing, at the ink bleeding through the thin paper.

"It's a really famous poem," she answers. Her foot brushes his underneath the table.

"I know," he says.

She stirs her coffee, and the metal spoon scratches along the cheap ceramic. "You said that after…? We celebrate."

He nods.

"So what happens after that? When the celebrating is done?"

Outside, the sun is caught behind the tips of tall firs, the light dripping over everything. The hoods of cars, the edges of buildings, spilling over and falling short of catching the window of their booth.

He shrugs, jabs at a piece of potato. "Usually we just kept fighting."

She turns, follows his sight line to peer at a thin line of light resting a few inches away from the line of someone's bumper.

"I hate it here," she says.

"Food was better in Hong Kong."

She bites down hard on her lip and he can feel the sting of it. The words darting on the edge of her mind. He likes to make her say them anyway. "…that's not what I was talking about."

"So…?"

The silverware rattles against the plates and he can hear the little irritations that spike up in her head, how she prefers chopsticks to flatware, how she dislikes the square metal trays and the plates, how she just wants the feeling of a ceramic bowl in her hand. There is the question of climate - the cold, sure, constant and unyielding with brief patches of sunlight like the way wild grasses dot every few hundred miles of desert - but there is also the fact of the few remaining colonies here, all of the residents speaking to her as if she were an oddity on display. Or the way they only speak to Raleigh as if she were invisible. As if she couldn't understand them or speak for herself. She's heard it, too, the way her accent floats around the halls from other mouths. Pale pink mouths twisting with laughter.

"There is so much we could be doing," she says, and the plate rattles.

"We're making a difference here."

"We're not doing _anything_ here. The Jaeger program can be saved, but not with us here. We're wasted."

He shakes his head, thinks to correct her error. "You're just…"

She arches a brow. "What?"

"Homesick."

Her lower back curls, and she huffs a breath, scowling like she's been hit. "That's all this is to you," she says, and he looks down at the dry potatoes.

"It's just that…"

"No," she interrupts. "I came to Alaska because I thought… but now, you are… hiding? We need to help Marshal Hansen. We need to be doing something."

"We are," he says.

And she purses her lips, jabs at one of the vegetables with her fork, held awkwardly in her hand. Positioned that way deliberately. "Yes?" she replies, "What are we doing?"

He pauses. "We are…"

She waits.

And how does the poem go?

 

 

 

 

 

(a scene of stillness/reverie and quiet thought/ripples in a pond

 

 

 

…or no, or _the sound of water_ , or have you gotten that confused with the noise of screaming metal? With the sound of a monster being forced to its knees by an even greater beast, with the noise of your own helplessness ringing in your ears like klaxons?)

 

 

 

 

 

She looks up at him and waits for an answer.

"We're still fighting for something. It just doesn't feel the way it did when we were in Hong Kong."

"And what is that?" she says. "That we're fighting for?"

The first answer he thinks of: "Peace."

Her laughs break in short bursts like a humid summer rain, and his skin itches. "You think we'll find that here?" she says, finally. "From the other side of the ocean?"

"What does distance have to do with it?" he says. "The world is…"

And she jabs the edge of the fork against the side of her mouth, peers down at her plate of unappetizing food. Shifts in her seat, gearing for a fight, and the noise of her thighs sticking to the vinyl follows. She clicks her tongue, a word following under her breath. "What?" she asks. "Different now?"

"You don't believe in it?"

"Never so easy," she says, leaning back and crossing her legs. "You have to fight for it. Always."

"What, peace?"

And she looks down, her eyes falling half-closed. Trying to hide herself, even now. "No," she says. Short, definitive. "Life."

"You're just…adjusting."

Her eyes narrow, and the words are sharp: "治に居て、乱を忘れず"

He doesn't understand. Supposes that's the point.

 

 

 

He finds out when the rest of the country does: on _See It Now with Elizabeth Padget_.

The armchairs are a little too soft, and they sink into the seats. Their hands dangle off the armrests, nearly brushing. (The assistant producer shuffles over, jots notes on a clipboard, talks out of the corner of his mouth about ratings and touch-ups and if they could just sit a little closer together, if they could touch hands or make some kind of gestures, before bleating in panic about the budget and the time.)

At the end of the interview segment, Elizabeth leans forward from her seat, her nearly white-blonde hair falling with a nearly perfect sense of dramatic timing. "So," she chimes, "Now that you've saved the world, what's next for the world's most in-demand soldiers?"

He finds a laugh somewhere, and it manages to sound something closer to real than the last few interviews they've done. Mako doesn't move. She crosses her legs and looks up; on one of the small televisions on the edge of the interview line, her face is a hard line, a blank slate, and Raleigh knows she isn't going to read well. (And there's been enough of that, too - newspaper headlines talking about him as the leader of the mission, and her as the support; tabloid headlines denouncing her as cold and pronouncing their friendship one entirely fabricated for the press tour; the slurs aimed at her head have been ridiculous, though she's never reacted to any of it.)

"I'm returning to the Hong Kong Shatterdome," she says.

Elizabeth's eyebrows shoot up. "Oh? The both of you?"

"No," Mako answers, before he can speak. "Just me. I'm returning to begin the early research work into the Mach VIs."

"And you believe you'll receive funding for these machines when the threat has been eliminated?"

"An ounce of prevention. Worth a pound of cure," she recites.

Elizabeth blinks. "And?"

"Benjamin Franklin," Mako returns. "One of your national heroes. To stop preparing because the breach has collapsed would be foolish."

"You don't find it to be a waste of international resources?"

Mako's jaw tics, and Raleigh leans forward, clapping his hands once. "It's still in the early stages," he answers, and Mako keeps her expression resolute, still facing forward, "And you never want to underestimate the kaiju."

Elizabeth forces a placating smile, her cheeks looking pinched and pink. "Well! There you have it. Straight from the horse's mouth. Now, we encourage you all to write in and let us know what you think of this segment, and…"

He looks to Mako; Mako doesn't look at him.

 

 

 

(After, when they're in the dressing rooms, and the mics have been unclipped and returned to the safety of their boxes, he asks, _why didn't you tell me?_

She takes a deep breath, and peers at her reflection. _you want to stay. i want to leave. what's to talk about?_

_us?_

She turns then, her expression unreadable.

 _we_ are _friends, aren't we?_

_of course_

_then…_

_we aren't in the drift any longer_ , she says, after a moment of silence. Stands then, pulling her hair back and tying it with a rubber band. _things have changed._

_yeah, but that doesn't mean…_

She smiles, but it echoes of the pond. A sadness breaking the stillness; motion destroying something more pure, more beautiful. _i hate alaska_ , she answers. _and you aren't ready to leave it._ )

 

 

 

She chooses an early flight. Coordinates it with his jog.

There's absence waiting in his room when he comes back from running through the snow, everything neat and orderly where it was lived in before. It doesn't take him long to figure it out. The heaviness, too, is anticipated; weighs him down like snow drifts against weak roofs, lodges something in his throat, makes him swipe a glass off the top of the desk just to hear it break against the floor.

 _get over yourself_ , someone whispers in his head, and his jaw clenches. _you think you were good enough for_ her? _you think you could have held your own with someone whose life is still moving?_

There's a note, too, from her. A long letter. Written in English. Making allowances for him, even now.

He thumbs the edge of the envelope, listens to the crinkle of the paper inside.

 _you were partners at the end of the world_ , the voice continues. _you really think you could have been anything else?_

He breaks the seal of the envelope, and the paper slices diagonally across the pad of his thumb. He draws his finger to his mouth and sucks on the cut. A knock on the door then and part of him can't help but hope, even now, that it's her. That she's come back.

(It isn't. It never was.)

Peering through the window, he sees only reporters, clustered together on the small front stoop of the cabin, their cameras knocking against their bags and their parkas. Smoking cigarettes, drinking out of flasks, and swearing. "Christ," one of the reporters mumbles, lighting up a cigarette, "I can't wait until this damn Jaeger beat is over. Fucking Alaska. Send me back to California with the addicts and the sex scandals."

"He saved the world," one of the others answers, pulling from a flask and handing it over. "People are gonna eat this shit up for months."

They spy him in the window then, and the quick noise of shutters go off like rapid fire.

The voice continues, relentless and taunting - _should have taken her picture when you had the chance, but then i guess she isn't ready to join your own little memorial wall yet_

He draws away from the window, jerks at the curtain to block out the camera flashes.

_or was that only supposed to be for places you left?_

He throws a punch against the hallway wall that rattles up his hand and makes his knuckles ache.

 

…and what's that they say about old habits?

 

 

 

 

 

She calls when she lands. A brief note to tell him that she has arrived, that the Shatterdome is just as they left it, that she will be in touch soon. His answers are short, terse. The way soldiers respond to command.

The letter she left him is only a page, written in blue ink against cheap stationery, and when he fishes the letter out, he runs his fingers along the back of the paper, feels the impressions left from her writing.

 

 

 

 

_Dear Raleigh,_

_By this time, I have returned to the Hong Kong Shatterdome to resume work on the Jaeger project. I hope that you wish our project success, and that you will support our work publicly as well as privately. In the last few weeks of ~~our~~ my stay in alaska, I ~~did~~ do not want to give you the impression that I had been unhappy. it was not where I needed to be. Hopefully, you understand. I believe you will._

_I know that Alaska is important to you and that you must remain there to complete your own work, and I hope to hear of your success in whatever it is that you pursue. Please know that I believe us, still, to be good friends, and be assured that I remain interested and enthusiastic in hearing about new things in your life. You can always reach me here at the Shatterdome. You remember the phone numbers. Remember when dialing out from where you are that the country code is 852._

_The war is over, and I know that everyone is still adjusting, which is why this is the only time I could leave. I need to make sure that the Marshal's work does not become something antiquated, that he did not die without purpose. I hope you can understand this, also. I know that my leaving so early may make you doubt some of what I'm saying in this letter, but please believe that I needed to make sure I touched down in Hong Kong as quickly as possible._

_I remain committed to being your friend._

_You are always going to be my copilot._

_森眞子_

 

 

 

 

He finds a job tracking the wall, tearing down what took years and millions of dollars to try and build in the first place. Guesses there's a kind of poetry to it.

They talk once a week. Or, they try to. Instead, there's times when the line will go fuzzy and soft, when the time difference makes her too sleepy, when he can hear Tendo rustling her sleeve and pushing another cup of coffee towards her on a counter. And then there's the days they arrange calls in the afternoon (her time) when he's drinking a cup of coffee to avoid falling asleep in the middle of a sentence.

They don't talk much.

There are the details of the destruction of the wall. (He follows it to Valdez, then Juneau in its slow pace. Breaking down seems to be even more difficult and time-consuming than building it up in the first place. With less money in it, there's fewer men and all of them, working twelve to sixteen hours a day at the welds and mortar that were supposed to have outlasted giant beasts and the harsh snows of the state.)

She has even less to report. The nights that she shows up just wired enough to talk without being distracted are coming fewer and farther between, and the dark circles are getting worse. Sometimes, Tendo slips onto the line and says something about how she's fallen asleep, how they need a few hours and could he just wait until next week?

Everyone still trying to save the world in their own way.

One night, four a.m. his time, the mug of coffee beside him cold and stale and tasting faintly of sawdust, he leans his cheek against his hand, closes his eyes for a second. Says, "I miss you."

Hears her pause, hears her pressing her lips together, thinking of a response. "Raleigh…"

"No," he says. "It was - sorry, I haven't slept in a while, and…"

And?

 

 

 

( _and the truth came out before I could think to stop it, and I think you should come back, and I think whatever I'm chasing should lead me somewhere closer to you, and it's stupid, and it's weak, and I'm sorry, I'm sorry_ )

 

 

 

She exhales over the line. "I think we are both tired," she replies.

"Yeah," he says.

"But the work we're doing… it's good. It demands our focus."

He smiles, forgets that she can't see him over the line. "You're … really making a difference over there, huh?"

And he can hear her smile back. " _We_ are."

Outside, the wall is in various states of disrepair along the boundary. Graffitied with swear words and other tags, half torn down, jagged like teeth in an open mouth. And every morning, before dawn, he brings himself face to face with the cold, with the gradual destruction of everything he spent years building, with chasing himself in circles. Following the wall to wherever it still stands.

"I'm not so sure about that."

"I am. You aren't one to avoid doing good, Raleigh. Not when you can help it."

"Any news on what they want to do with the Jaeger program?"

"They want to sell it back to Hong Kong. Use it as an extension of their airbase."

"You think there's still a chance you can save it?"

She hums, a breathy noise caught on the line. "Marshal Hansen and I," she begins, haltingly, "We are fighting to save it. The moment the fight ends, there is… an urgent call to dismantle everything and to stop spending. But we are … persevering. Looking for ways to keep its heart beating."

"If anyone could, you can."

She takes a deep breath, exhales as a shaky sigh. "You sound exhausted. You should go to sleep. It's late."

"Early," he answers.

"Good night, Raleigh."

"Good night, Mako."

He hangs up the phone. Dreams of her face that night. Of the way her fingers brush against the nape of his neck when he falls asleep, the way she plays with his hair as he drifts into sleep. Hears the soft, high notes of her singing.

 

 

 

 

 

He's back at the old house.

The paint on the posts is beginning to chip. He'll need to bargain with Mr. A next summer so he'll have time to repaint the porch. Yancy's slouching over three steps on the porch, leaning back and kicking idly at the edge of the step, arms over his eyes to block the sun.

He steps up towards the porch, his dogtags knocking against the front of his chest.

"Bring a beer?" Yancy calls, and he laughs.

"Not for you," he answers.

Yancy grumbles, turning back to peer at the sun casting shadows across the branches of the tree in the front yard. "I ought to kick your ass."

"Just get it yourself," he says, taking a seat by the bottom step and peering up at the network of branches that intersect and separate.

"Not for that," Yancy says. "What the hell do you think you're doing back here?"

A breeze rattles the younger branches, the leaves rustling slowly to the ground. "What are you talking about?"

"Come on, kid. You're wasting your time back here, and you know it."

"I'm here with you," he answers, crossing his arms over his chest. "Fixing the coast. Tearing down the wall."

"You forget who you're talkin' to. I know you better 'an anyone else."

"So why aren't you here?"

Yancy shakes his head. "That's just like you in a fight. Baiting with a feint. Don't change the subject; you know why I'm not here."

The sun disappears behind a cloud, and the tree begins to wither. Turning to ash in front of his eyes. Must be an aftereffect of the radiation or something. He'll go, too. Soon.

"You're in the wrong spot. You want to find me, you don't need to look anywhere. I'm always here. I'm always in your head. But running back to look for the house isn't going to fix anything. Running back to look for Dad isn't going to fix anything."

The tree dies; the leaves falling like light rain to the ground, dry and dead. Down the block, a kid is crying. Yelling about something, chasing a car.

"I'm not," he says.

"You remember where the house is. You really want to go see it, you go see it. But just 'cause I'm not around to kick your ass doesn't mean you don't know what to do anymore. You know."

"You're the natural, Yance," he replies. "What the hell am I supposed to - "

Yancy moves to stand on his feet. Stretches. "You do what you're good at. Fight." He turns back towards the front door, the steps creaking as he heads back into the house. "And, next time, bring me a damn beer." The screen door knocks lightly against the frame as he disappears into the house.

He tries to follow, but his body stays rooted. The tree showering blossoms on top of his head, mixing with the dead leaves at his feet.

The house flickers and fades like the dying light of a firefly.

 

 

 

 

 

He calls her. It's late.

She picks up anyway.

"もしもし?" she answers, her voice scratchy with sleep.

"It's me."

She rolls onto her side and the mattress creaks with her. "Oh," she replies. "Raleigh, is anything the matter? I didn't think we had anything scheduled."

"We don't."

"Oh. Is anything wrong?"

"I'm sorry, I should have thought before I…"

"No, you can tell me."

He ducks his head, and a small laugh bubbles out of him. "There's nothing to tell. I, um, I didn't think."

"Raleigh," she says, her voice low.

" _Anata ni aitai desu_ ," he tries, and she sighs over the line.

"I haven't moved," she says. "I'm still here."

_A fixed point._

"I want you to know that I…"

"Shh," she replies. "Wait. You are coming?"

He pauses, and an icy rain starts drumming against the roof of his low house. Against the windows.

"Raleigh?"

"Yes," he answers. "Yes, I'm going."

"Then… let it wait. また会う日まで. Okay?"

"I haven't even told you when I'm going to go. How can you trust that…"

"Because I trust you. You are my co-pilot. If you say you are coming…"

"I am."

"Then I have no reason to not believe you."

The line goes quiet and he listens to her breathing. Hears her yawn.

"Was that everything you wanted to talk about?"

"Yes," he answers. "I didn't mean to wake you. I forgot… the time. You should go back to sleep."

"また会う日まで," she repeats.

In his head, a koto plays and her voice echoes his name. Scraps of song catching on the wind.

 

 

 

 

 

He hasn't been back to the house since they left for the Academy. He can barely remember the path back to it. Only snippets find their way through - the winding path, here, and the red brick of the old savings and loan, that, he remembers; or what about there, where the thawing snow would drip down from the overstuffed roof gutters and splash against their notebooks?

Alaska takes up too much and not enough space in his head. He can't remember if he hated it before, or if he loved it; if the snow made him feel miserable or if it meant that he got to curl up inside with the cats and play board games and make hot chocolate. He talks about it like the war was what gave birth to him, and can't help but think that more than part of that is true.

He remembers the intricacies of the Academy better than anything about the old house. But the old swing, suspended from one of the sturdier branches of the tree in the front yard - that, he can't forget. Remembers its old creak with each push, the hard knots of wood in the seat. Remembers Yancy pushing him off of it once to steal his turn. Remembers feeling rooted.

 

 

 

 

 

The house has disappeared.

No.

The house is lost.

Another casualty to a war. The thing he forgot he was supposed to be fighting for.

 

 

 

 

 

He sits on the flat patch of decimated ground where the old house used to be.

The tall oak - was it oak? - that used to stand in the front yard, now decimated, a hint of a stump peering out from underneath whatever destroyed it. Kaiju blue? Radiation? Too many bombings from the beginnings of the kaiju war? And does it matter?

He sits on the stump, looks back at the space where the house used to stand. Remembers his mother sitting in the kitchen, folding tea towels over her knees and digging her hands into pie dough. Or, was that someone else? Remembers her silhouette cast against the pea-green linoleum of the kitchen, and the smile that she used to wear. Always half-hollow, always a shadow.

 

 

It starts to snow.

In his head, a poem floats to surface (and he is tired of it all; tired of poetry, tired of promises, tired of the drift; when can he stop feeling like an ill-fitting piece in a larger, smoother machine? When can he stop feeling like an unnecessary part, a hindrance to someone else's greatness?

And when can he stop the flow of her thoughts and her words into his own head? How can he get the noise of her to leave him? When can he learn to be his own person again and stand on his own two feet and remember the feeling of being hollowed?

Because two people can never be hollow together; two people can never occupy the empty spaces inside each other and feel so emptied; it's only leaving the drift that leaves you empty, only getting away from the other person that reminds you that you move through the world a hollow shell;

Say she's an ocean away, say he's here, hiding out, trying to find out if he's meant to have a destiny or a life apart from the day-to-day things that he hopes will wear his body down; say he wakes up and feels aches along the side of his body, along his spine from where he remembers her touching him in his sleep; say he gets headaches from nothing other than the memory that there used to be a thudding fullness and now there is a pulsing blankness.

Say he is tired; how can he rest if she pulls him forward?

Say he is exhausted; how can he stay when she keeps moving?

Say he wants to die - and is that it? Is that the secret he's been keeping? - and she tells him no; say he wants to die and she tells him life is his destiny; what is he supposed to believe?):

_冬枯れや 世は一色に 風の音_

It starts to snow, and the wind whistles through trees that no longer exist, and he sits at the stoop of a house that has disappeared and listens for the family of ghosts that used to know him.

He drums his fingers against his knee and leans back to lie on the ground, staring up at the cloudless blue sky. There are scratches of white, and snow landing on his face and melting, snow dusting his clothes, and he throws an arm over his eyes and remembers Yancy's name like a prayer.

The snow and the wind, bright and cold against the apples of his cheeks, the tip of his nose. Soft as a mother's kiss.

 

 

 

 

 

(The wind carries her voice, or she is in your head. Speaking wisdom, singing songs. Even now. Even across an ocean.

Her laugh is small. The way mothers laugh at children – affectionate, and with the knowledge that things could be so much better.

 _ask me the question_ , she says, and the delicate higher branches of the tree that used to stand in front of his house rattle, tracking more snow across his face.

He doesn't know the question. The words come anyway.

_ikutabi mo/yuki no fukasa o/tazunekeri_

Clutter his mouth with foreign syllables, cloud his eyes with tears.

 

Her answer isn't simple. Her answer, another riddle.

_ひととせをながめつくせるあさといでに　うすゆきこほるさびしさのはて_

 

 

And do you understand?

Does it matter when the wind carries her voice away from you now? Gives and takes away, and leaves you to nothing else but your own questions?

The snow melts over your face and you lose feeling. The body becomes numb, and you make an angel in the snow. Because you remember it. Because you hear your brother's laughter. Because, in it, there is supposed to be joy.

And the wind carries her laugh across an ocean. Returns her joy to her own mouth. Leaves her thoughts where they are, sown like scattered seed in your own head.)

 

 

 

 

 

He packs a suitcase. Another hand-me-down, black and old and frayed all to hell, zipper teeth sticking in places. There's never much to pack but he finds calm in it anyway, pushing the sweaters to fit in the gaps of the suitcase, layering objects in like fitting pieces in a puzzle. The photos are last. Slipped securely into the zipper pouch, tied together with an elastic band. Scenes of the world peeking out at him from behind soft mesh.

Thinks about bringing pieces of the wall, pebbles from the shore of the beach, pieces of driftwood that he can pretend used to belong to the foundation of the old house. And how much of his pockets can he weigh down with stones that aren't any longer? How much of his suitcase can he pack with pieces of wood that may or may not be from his house?

 

 

(And has he lost it?

The front porch with the chipping white paint and the swing from the oak tree in the front yard, and his brother lazing against the steps and calling to him for bottles of beer…

Has he lost it?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_I think this is a mistake._

The Hong Kong Shatterdome shimmers into being around him, like mirages always seem to do in the movies, and he finds himself in Stacker's office. He's sitting against the edge of the desk, his hands at his sides.

 _He isn't ready_ , Stacker answers, and Mako steps forward from behind him.

_Marshal, you said it yourself. It's the last stand. No one else knows Gipsy Danger better._

The room flickers, and he steps forward. Closer to her. Closer to Stacker. She turns to peer out the window, stares through him.

_You believe he'll be able to do it?_

_I have studied everything he's done in the last few months. And he is… unpredictable. Reckless. Improvisational._

_And you still think he'll be able to get the job done?_

She doesn't shift from her position, her hands neatly clasped behind her back like a soldier at parade rest. _Depends on the job. But you need him._

_You think he should pilot._

_No. I don't think he's ready. But I don't think you can run this mission without him._

_What makes you think he'll even accept the offer?_

_いざ, かまくらというときには_

_And you believe Mr. Becket will?_

She nods her head, her hair falling in front of her face with the motion. _He is reckless, but not… unwise. He believed he was doing the right thing, and it cost him more than he anticipated._ She pauses then, turning towards him. _He will be more than just useful in a fight. I believe he will be necessary._

_This is your assessment, Miss Mori?_

_It is, sir._

_Fine._

He reaches out to touch her, his fingers brushing through the vision of her arm as she passes. "Mako," he says, and she pauses in the doorway. The room grows dark; the room shudders into transparency, and her silhouette is cast against the wall.

 _Raleigh_ , she whispers, trailing her hand across his face, and he tries to move closer. A step forward, and she steps back. _I trust you. I believe in you. The drift is strong, but it is not the only thing that connects us._

_Mako, I trust…_

_Remember? You have to let someone in; you have to really connect._

Her footsteps echo as her shadow crosses into the hallway.

He doesn't move. Hears her voice as a whisper against the shell of his ear.

_And are you coming?_

He turns, and finds nothing. Not the Shatterdome, not Stacker's office, not even Mako's shadow.

An empty room. His own hands, growing transparent. His own hands, beginning to disappear.

_And are you coming?_

 

 

 

 

 

He touches down in Hong Kong on the old helipad, and heads out to find most of the Shatterdome buried underneath tarp and plastic sheeting, roped off by the authorities. She comes to greet him. Stands underneath the eave of the hangar, her arms crossed over her chest as he approaches. A tired smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.

She's growing her hair out; it looks good on her. The bright blue at the ends of her hair darker, more faded.

"It's good to see you," he says, and she smiles, then.

"You too." He steps into the hangar, and everything smells the same. Motor oil and sawdust. He can see what she's been talking about - the Shatterdome looks like a ghost of itself, the lack of crew and the lack of Jaegers leaving most of the old launch pads shuttered and empty, and their crews deployed back to their home countries. But there's also the beginnings of a Mach VI lying on the floor as piles of scrap metal. Things half-welded together, the sketchings of a Conn-Pod.

Tendo heads in from the hallway then, pencil between his teeth and four cups of coffee in hand, shouting when he spies Raleigh.

Mako takes the cups of coffee from his hands, setting them down on a nearby table as Tendo comes to knock him in a hug.

"You landed!"

He laughs. "That I did." He gestures towards the piles on the floor, and Tendo hums.

"Yeah, meet the head and chest plate of, hopefully, our next Jaeger." He flashes a grin then, flicking the pencil between his fingers. "Got a name picked out and everything."

Mako frowns. "But we're not going to get ahead of ourselves."

"No," Tendo shoots back. "Of course not."

Raleigh pulls at the suitcase and says, "Am I just bunking in my old…?"

Mako shakes her head. "The area's been sectioned off. We're operating at minimal functionality right now. The only way they would let us stay on. Marshal Hansen is still trying to secure funding from investors and officials in Australia, but for the time being, we're operating out of Wing B only."

"I just want to put my bag…"

"Yes, of course. I'll show you."

She squares her shoulders and sets off down one of the passageways. He tries to ignore Tendo's knowing smile as he follows her.

 

 

 

 

 

She strides down the hallways faster than he remembers her walking. Her thumbs jammed into her pockets the way he does when he doesn't know what else to do, when he's trying to avoid talking about something he knows he needs to talk about. "Mako."

"It's just a little further down the hall," she answers.

"Stop for a second." They keep moving. "Mako."

"It isn't much…"

"Can you just… stop for a second?"

She doesn't. Keeps moving further down, mumbles something about the room number, and he leans forward, his hand curling around her wrist and pulling her back. She stops, but doesn't turn. Keeps her weight on the balls of her feet, panting.

"Mako, please," he says. "Look at me?"

She turns slowly, her head tilted down towards the floor, her eyes closed. "I didn't want to… I didn't want you to think that I… "

He pulls on her hand again, steps forward to wrap his arms around her. Buries his face against the crook of her shoulder. Breathes in the sea smell of her. Warm and crisp. Inviting. It takes her a moment, but she sags against him then, her fingers pressing in answer against his back.

"I'm sorry," he says.

She exhales. A shaky thing, warm through the fabric of his shirt.

"For everything. You deserved…"

"No," she says. "Stop." She pulls away then, brushing at her eyes and sniffing. "You should unpack."

He laughs, but pulls at the handle of his suitcase. "Lead the way."

Another three steps forward, and she turns her head towards him. "I meant what I said."

He stumbles against the floor, but follows after her. "I couldn't have done it without you, you know. It's like how they used to talk at the Academy. You're only as good as your co-pilot."

She stops, her hand stilling on the doorknob. "This is your room."

He approaches, and she takes a few steps back. Presses herself against the opposite wall.

 

He twists the knob, the door opens - inside, a bare bunk, a blank wall. "My door's always open, you know." (And what you mean: _i know the weight of the drift, the weight of the absence of it_.

She nods once. Looks to the path you've just walked. Curling in on herself. And you wonder when you became such mysteries to each other. When you knew each other so well - too well - that asking questions became an embarrassment.

Or was it always that you knew the answer?)

"I know." She licks her lips, savors a pause. "You should unpack."

He watches her face for a moment, brushes a hand over his mouth. Smiles. "You look good," he says. "The longer hair suits you."

She returns his smile.

"You should unpack," she repeats. "Tendo and I are sketching some schematics, but you should find Marshal Hansen. He would like seeing you." She clicks her tongue and turns down towards the hallway, her boots heavy against the floor.

Ripples in a pond.

 

 

 

He turns back to the room, drawing the suitcase behind him when the roar in his head grows louder, a heartbeat searching another heartbeat; her body is an interjection, knocking against his with unanticipated force, her arms wrapping around him in a tight embrace.

"Mako?"

She pulls away, looks down the hall. Takes a retreating step. Then another.

"Hey," he says, and the heaviness of her surrounds him. Drowns him in its thick humid cloud.

He takes a breath and it stutters; it feels like it did when he was hiding on top of a wall in a frozen wasteland of a construction camp, like a punch to the throat when the body forgets everything but the acuteness of its empty space.

She sniffs and heads down the hall. Her thoughts ringing in his head _you're here_

_i had to_

_i'm sorry_.

 

 

 

 

 

He finds Herc in the mess after he's finished unpacking. Sitting at one of the tables, feeding scraps of food to Max from his hand.

"Marshal," he says, and Herc looks up, shaking his head.

"That's not me," he says. "That was always Stacker."

"Doesn't change the fact that you got the stars."

Herc shrugs, dusts himself off as he stands, patting Max on top of the head. "Didn't think you'd come back." After a pause, he adds, "Good you did, though. We need you."

"Are things really that bad?"

"They aren't good, I'll tell you that much."

"She - Mako - told me you were trying to rustle up money in Australia."

Herc coughs a laugh. "Yeah. Nobody's really biting, though."

"Even after everything the Jaeger program's done? Even after Sydney?"

He shrugs. "People've got short memories, Raleigh. What can I say?"

He jams his thumbs in the loops of his pants, huffs. "There must be _something_. Japan, China, maybe? If Australia and the US won't do it, I mean, you still have options."

"You staying?"

He sniffs. "Wing B," he says. "For now."

"That's the only one that's open. Most of the others have been shut down."

"I'm going to stay for a while," Raleigh says.

"Good. We need you around here. Help clean up the shit."

He coughs a laugh, brushes his fist against his mouth. "I'm only here for the dog."

"Yeah, sure, you are," he answers. "Nothing to do at all with Mako, eh?"

He grins. "Nah."

 

 

 

 

 

He spends his first evening in the hangar with Mako and Tendo, the three of them eating dinner together in the hangar.

Tendo can't sit still. Gets up in the middle of a bite to tinker with some of the scrap metal, to redo lines on one of the schematics. Keeps adding things, revising things. Asking him questions before he's finished asking the last one. It's Tendo at his most _him_ , all manic rapid-fire questions and unfinished thoughts.

Raleigh busies himself with pushing his food around his plate, with thinking of the questions he wants to ask her.

The two of them sit close together, a few feet away from Tendo's impromptu workshop. Mako eats slowly, deliberately, her eyes focused on whatever Tendo's tinkering with. And every so often, she makes an aside - _adjust this_ or _switch that_ \- but this hasn't exactly been the conversational catch-up he'd hoped for.

"So," he says, "What have you been doing since you left Alaska?"

She hums around a spoonful of corn. "Trying to help the Marshal with funding. Or helping here with the schematics. It's been…difficult."

"I missed you," he says. "Hearing your voice."

Her smile is small, but she ducks her head. Keeps her gaze fixed forward. "The silence was difficult to adjust to."

"It was silent for you?"

He and Yancy never used to talk about it. The aftermath. After all, there were all sorts of idiosyncrasies to get used to - the way Yancy'd hand him something before he even registered that he'd needed it, the way his reaction times would change, would fall apart after the drift, either be too slow or too fast, the way he'd keep hearing himself think in his brother's voice - but nothing they thought important enough to sit down and talk about. After all, they didn't need it; they were Jaeger pilots - an unstoppable team - that spent hours in the drift, talking without talking.

He forgets the way that this works in real life. The way that people talk about what they're going through, the way that relationships develop. The way that _friendships_ develop. With a constant buzz of noise. Talking and oversharing, talking and talking, asking questions. In the drift, none of that registers; none of that matters.

It doesn't speak. Beyond silence, the drift is all image, flashes of bits and pieces of memories and dreams and desires. And maybe he's been trying too hard to bring the drift out in real life; maybe they were never supposed to repeat the unbreathable closeness of the drift outside of it.

"No," she says. "I heard you. Even after… I left Alaska."

"Yeah?" he says, leaning back on his hands. "What was I saying?"

She blushes.

"That good, huh?"

"There were times when your voice would fade, and it was quiet. It felt like…"

"A piece of you suddenly missing?"

"Mm. ...It was…" she pauses, a small laugh finding its way out of her. "Difficult. The distance."

He nods and reaches for her hand. "It pulls on you." How else to explain the ache of it, the way absence manifests as restlessness, as insomnia, as missing a part of you that was never a part of you?

Her fingers close around his. This is how they move; this is how they dance; a touch is all it takes to become one body again, to become extensions of one other and remember what it was like to move as mirrors and still be whole. He inhales and she sighs; he relaxes and she tenses; he moves away and her body moves closer. Her palm presses against his; then, her wrist; then, the entire side of her body until they are sitting like that, leaning against each other, mooring each other up.

 

 

 

 

 

(She falls asleep like that. Dropping her head against his shoulder, her hand tight around his own, sliding lower to the floor.

 _She hasn't slept in days_ , Tendo comments, offhandedly, as he shifts his position. Her head falls against his thigh, her hands falling to rest flat against the floor. Her hair slips loose with her occasional movements, and the odd sliver of incomplete Japanese escapes intermittently as a whisper.

 _Have you?_ Raleigh asks, and Tendo lifts his mug of coffee - his _two_ mugs of coffee - and eyes him as he takes a long sip. _Guess that answers my question._

She mumbles his name and shifts, snoring lightly. Presses her cheek against his leg.

 _How's it been around here?_ he asks, as Tendo throws a small ratchet wrench against the ground. _Really._

_Honestly, my man? Not great._

His fingers comb through her hair, linger on the fading blue ends. She sighs in her sleep.

_And her?_

Tendo sighs. A long, heavy sound. The first time he's ever heard Tendo sound tired in all the time he's known him. _You already know the truth so why are you asking me?_

He hears the accusation.

_The drift._

Tendo claps his hands together once, reaches for the same wrench he'd tossed aside. Sucks his teeth and tightens a bolt somewhere inside the face of the machine.

 _You know how hard it is. You shouldn't have left her to deal with it alone._ He clicks his tongue, rattles off a quick line in Cantonese. _Wasn't right._

_Tendo, I…_

The wrench rattles against the metal side. _Don't have to explain yourself to me, brother. I've seen it all._

Mako reaches for his hand, hugging it to her chest.

_But her?_

In her sleep, she hums. A scrap of song she smiles around.)

 

 

 

 

 

Tendo cracks his knuckles, his neck. "I'm not yelling at you, man. You and I, we've been through the shit. It's just - "

"No, I know," he interrupts. "You don't have to explain either. It's just that I never thought - "

Mako stretches, her legs curling underneath her, the joints in her back popping loudly.

"You never thought what?"

He shakes his head. "Nothing."

He should have known (and how many times can he learn the same lesson? How many times can he take the same medicine and say that he just wasn't ready for it?). All of the times after their missions, their drifts, he and Yancy barely spent any time apart.

He owed her the same. He owes her better than he's given her.

Tendo hums, flicks on the acetylene torch. Its hiss comforting in a strange way. "I know that with everything that happened... and I'm not trying to take that away from you..."

He shakes his head. "Tendo, it's okay. You're right. I understand."

 

 

 

(A waltz:

She wakes up. She moves away from you. Her hand drops yours.

 

 

And the bow?

Chin ducking down towards her chest, a mumbled apology, reaching out for a screwdriver and heading towards the machine.)

 

 

 

 

 

Growing back together is harder than growing apart. It's different when it's someone who's seen inside your head, someone who can finish your sentences even when you're in a different room, even when it's a sentence you haven't spoken aloud, someone who can tell your own jokes and your life story; it's different when you walk away from them. Like walking away from yourself.

Coming back means facing down the thing you decided you weren't going to be any longer. (And is it growth? And is it forgiveness?)

Days pass when Mako avoids him, tries to avoid speaking to him or running into him in the hallways. After months and months of so much space, suddenly they are confronted with the opposite problem. And he sees the way she adapts. Sees the way she presses her body against opposite walls, the way she leans into open space, the way her eyes always gravitate towards the exit first. It's suffocating now to be so close. Drowning in a glut of information - too much to hear, too much to feel, too much to remember.

So he tries to figure out how this works - a little boy puzzling together pieces of his mother's favorite vase, lying in broken shards. How can he begin to get her to forgive? How can he begin to atone?

 

 

 

 

 

It's a week and several beers later that he finds himself outside her door around midnight. She's just starting to get ready to go to sleep after another two nights of working through the morning.

He goes to knock, and the door swings open.

"I heard you," she says.

He smiles, and it comes out nervous. He hasn't felt nervous in front of someone else in a long while. Feels like he disappointed her somehow. "I don't know what I'm doing here," he says, and she shakes her head.

"You do. I hear you. I know."

He shifts his weight, coughs a small laugh. "I've never done it like this before. It's… "

"Uncomfortable for you," she suggests.

"Yeah. For a start."

She braces her hand against the doorway, blocking him. Squares her shoulders, bearing her weight forward on her feet like she's about to start a fight. He might even let her. God knows they probably need one.

(And hadn't that been part of the package too? Him and Yancy, throwing themselves against each other, punching and hitting each other just to remind each other of _boundaries_ , of where one body ended and the other began, of where the idea of mine and yours went?)

Her head drops forward, and she sighs. "Raleigh, it's late."

"I know it is, I just - "

She sighs, and he steps forward into her space. Hovers his hands over his own hips instead of reaching out for hers. "What?"

"I should have been there for you," he says. "To explain…"

"I didn't need it."

"Doesn't matter. It was my responsibility. As your co-pilot. As the vet."

Her fingers curl against the doorjamb. He wonders when the weight will get lighter. When their bodies will grow used to it. The force of coming together, and the violence of coming apart.

"Raleigh."

"Can I just…" His fingertips graze her waist, brushing at her skin through the fabric of the sweater. She sighs, leaning forward as he steps towards her to close the distance. Tracing shapes against her as his hands track up the sides of her body to rest against her back. To pull her against him. Her body all heat and softness, delicate skin and hard muscle underneath. His fingers catch against the loops of her knit sweater.

She tucks her face against his shoulder and sighs, and there is nothing else to the puzzle than this: they fit together; there is stillness; they are only planets disappearing into the solar system that carries them.

"I'm sorry," he says. "For not being there."

"No," she says.

"The thing about the Jaeger… you never take the journey alone, and I - "

Her mouth skims against his neck, her hands reaching up to play with the ends of his hair. "It isn't that simple," she replies. "Learn to forgive yourself. Listen to me."

His forehead rests against hers. _i'm listening_

She bites her lip, and her emotion echoes through his body. Shakes his shoulders, makes his hands tremor. _you're here now, aren't you?_

She steps back first. Leading, even when she isn't. (No matter how familiar you are with this dance, it's always the partner that matters. And she is beyond.

Beyond the leader-follower, beyond the dance, beyond the music.

She is her own; you follow that rhythm and find yourself. Find her.)

 

 

Looking up, she directs her gaze at him and doesn't look away. Doesn't flinch. "What are you doing?" she asks. A gentler question this time. "Are you staying, or are you going?"

"Mako?"

"I'm tired," she says. "I'm going to sleep." She pulls away from their shared frame, the space of the dance, and heads for the bunk.

Open space behind him, and he turns towards the door. Kicks it shut. Follows her lead.

 

 

 

(This night, she holds him.

Sleeps with one leg thrown over his, her hands pressed against his chest or wrapped around his waist, her mouth to his back. She times his breathing to his, and he lays his hands over hers, loses himself in the feeling of anchoring someone else.

Loses himself in the feeling of fullness.)

 

 

 

 

 

He dreams of a dance.

 

The hangar - empty. The music, faded and crackling with static, the way the movies always make old songs sound, patching in from somewhere. The PA? Slow and hypnotic, something they can't help but fall in sway to. Instrumental and quiet and simple - something too slow for a structured dance.

So she slips her arms around his neck and his fall along her waist and they shuffle around in small circles like students at a school dance.

She laughs and leans in, brushes her mouth against his ear. Whispers his name, whispers half of a lyric.

 _shh_ , he replies. _you're ruining the moment._

And there, in the low light, standing on her platform is Gipsy Danger. New as the day of her second birth - her born again moment - the metal polished to a dark blue, the heart a deep red that pulses with the beat. The whir of her reactor is hushed in the moment, too, but she looks on them and he can feel her content. The way pilots always can feel their Jaegers; the way pilots can always feel pilots.

Cherry blossoms start falling like snow against the tops of their heads, skidding down to the floor. Filling the room with sweetness.

_was that you?_

She wrinkles her nose. _how could that be me?_

He laughs, leans in and brushes his nose against hers. _maybe you have powers_ , he says. _i wouldn't be surprised._

The torrent of cherry blossoms doesn't stop. Cascades down harder until they're covered in them.

She moves her hands to cup his face. _now who's ruining the moment?_

He looks in her eyes and feels the way he did when he first stood in front of a Jaeger, feels the way he did when he was a child looking up at the stars and drawing maps and imagining old sailors in starships finding their way to other lands, the way he felt when he sat at the top of the wall and remembered Yancy's face, saw Yancy sitting beside him on the top of the wall, making comments about the bleak landscape.

 _stop thinking._ Her fingers trail over his face, over the edge of his brow.

_looking at you, i feel like… it's like the way i used to feel when i was looking at gipsy._

Gipsy towers over them, and Mako cranes her neck to look at the whirring reactor. _you're looking at gipsy right now._

He nuzzles his nose against her shoulder, hums an old song he remembers.

_birds singing in the sycamore tree/dream a little dream…_

 

 

 

He wakes to an empty bed. The heavy boots by the door absent.

Follows the trail of her thoughts to the hangar where she leans against an unrolled set of detailed drawings, a pencil behind her ear and sleeves rolled up to the elbow, delivering instructions to the crewman meant to be welding two of the loose pieces together.

"Hey," he greets and she turns to look at him with a smile.

"I didn't mean to leave you," she answers. "Tendo and I had a breakthrough about…"

"The Conn-Pod?"

She hums. "Something to enhance its safety."

He kicks at a loose piece of scrap metal and it scrapes along the floor. "If you need me, I can…weld."

Her laugh is crisp, and Tendo's follows. "Listen, man, as inviting as that resume sounds," Tendo chimes, "I think we might have to pass on that particular set of skills right now."

He kneels down, reaches for one of the pieces of scrap and takes care not to cut open his palms in doing so. "Shut up," he replies. "Where'd you find the money to build this prototype anyway?"

Tendo and Mako share a glance.

"I thought that Herc was still trying to find money. Did he manage to get someone, or…?"

Mako huffs, blowing a stray piece of hair away from her face. Fingers the edge of one of the pieces of scrap metal, drawing a line along the edge with marker.

"The startup was all us, brother," Tendo says.

"Us?"

"The Kaidonovskys," Mako answers. "They didn't have anyone else. They had Cherno Alpha, and, in the end…"

"They gave everything back to it," he finishes.

She nods.

Tendo knocks his knuckles against the front of his pants. "We're supposed to have a working prototype in a few months."

Leaning forward, Mako brushes her hand against his shoulder. Peers down at the emerging skeleton of the Jaeger.

"You got a name?"

Reaching deep into his pockets, Tendo pulls free a crumpled napkin. Unfurls it and shows the black ink, smudged but still legible. Grins wide. "What do you think?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The finished Jaeger is done in a dirty hunter green with streaks of white, and towers in the hangar at nearly 300 feet. It's a lot sleeker than the previous models, full of new metal alloys and gleaming with new paint.

They've made the shoulder guns less high, and kept the top body lighter than previous models to keep movement as unrestricted as possible and avoid delaying response time. The arsenals are along the hips, with new attachments for the old plasma cannon arm that provide better functionality.

The day before they show Herc, Mako carefully paints in the names of their co-pilots along the arms.

 _You remember the dead_ , she says, _so they will remember to watch over you._

 _You honor them_ , he answers.

_Yes._

He remembers the small shelf in her room. Always set near a corner, directed towards whatever source of natural light there was. Stacker's photo, and photos of her family - faded and worn from years of repeat viewing and touching - with a few other pinned wallet-size photos of other people he doesn't recognize.

Tendo does the stenciling on the Jaeger himself. Gray stars in a row on the shoulder, and its name across the chest.

_дима омега_

 

 

 

Born that day but christened weeks later when Marshal Hansen makes his official rounds of the Shatterdome after he returns from his fundraising trips to Australia, China, and Korea.

It's a private meeting, the three of them escorting him to the hangar together. Herc stands in the shadow of the Jaeger for a few moments in silence. Exhales and squares his shoulders. Raleigh knows him to be a man of few words - the Jaeger pilots tended to be like that after they witnessed any kind of loss - but there's a resonance to this silence that feels different.

"This is it, isn't it?" he says, to no one in particular. Mako doesn't move, and Tendo pulls at one of his suspenders. "It's this or nothing."

"Sir," Tendo says, "You should have seen the amount of work Mako - Miss Mori - put into this thing. It's… more than just another Jaeger. It's not just a Mach VI."

"And you named it…?"

"It's our last chance, right?" Tendo says. "Seemed appropriate."

"Does it run?"

"In theory."

Herc barks a laugh. "Need more than in theory. We've got potential investors coming. And you know what kind of show those fucks expect."

Mako looks to him, and he stares resolutely down at his shoes. Can feel her nervousness, even from here.

"You're the only pilots we've got left," Herc says. "I'll leave you to it."

He fights the urge to look over. Not even sure he can offer her any kind of comfort now, anyway. They saved the world. They were supposed to be finished with this. With being inside of each other's heads like this. And this new Jaeger, as gorgeous as she is, as built from the ground up as she is...

“She isn't Gipsy,” Mako says, simply, and he peers up at Dima. Towering in her strength, in her largeness. Square, blocky shoulders and a lithe torso, meant to emulate her predecessors and improve upon them. The Conn-Pod, too, has had to deal with minor tweaks from Tendo and his crew.

“That she ain't,” Tendo replies. “You feel like you're up for this, Mako?”

“There's no question. We must be.”

 

 

 

 

 

They have dinner together in the hallway outside his room that evening. Sit with their backs against opposite walls and try to avoid staring at each other.

It's been a while. For that, and other things.

Space is what's difficult to adjust to in the drift, and now he's confronted with the need to reconfigure its logistics again. So they sit together in the hallway, trying to become accustomed to each other's mental space. His, completely messy and scattered with various griefs he tries to convince himself he's moved past; hers, neat and organized with emphasis on a few hardline points. Honoring Stacker and the rest of her family; forgiveness; letting go of her quest for vengeance now that she's fulfilled her duty.

He touches on these, sitting there with her in the hallway. There are others.

She exhales and he takes a sharp breath.

“It's been...”

“A very long time,” he finishes. “Are you sure you're ready for this? Are you sure _we_ are?”

“In order to save the Jaeger program? I would give anything.”

“My head is a mess.”

“I know.”

“I don't want to set you up for any...bad surprises.”

She arches a brow. “Is there anything I should find surprising?”

He wipes at his mouth with his fist and suppresses a laugh. “Probably not, I guess.”

“Marshal Hansen has outlined the schedule for me, as well as the importance of our performance. There are going to be quite a few investors from Seoul and Shanghai. Tokyo.”

“And you'd be okay turning this over to them? Corporate suits?”quest

She shakes her head. “Marshal Hansen and I have discussed this at length.quest With Mr. Choi. What compromises we would be unwilling to make.”

“And you think they'd honor them?”

“No, but we would make them honor them.”

He turns his gaze to the ground, fidgets with a fraying thread on one of the pockets of his trousers. “Honestly, Mako... I don't know that we're ready for this.”

She scoffs, thumbing at her nose and drawing her knees up to her chest. “Do or do not, right, Raleigh? There is no try.”

He laughs then. A full-throated noise that fills the empty space. “Did you just quote _Star Wars_ at me?”

“It was his favorite, wasn't it?”

His smile falters for a moment, but he flashes a grin. “Yeah. It was.”

She shifts on the floor, moving to sit beside him. Takes his hand between her own. “We will get through whatever we need to. But we need to do this.”

He turns to look at her. Remembers a memory that never was of the feel of her mouth under his. “Yeah. I wouldn't leave you. Don't worry.”

A hint of a blush lingers on her cheeks, and she traces her fingertips over the grooves of his knuckles.

 

 

 

 

 

The day of the presentation, there's nothing but the thrum of adrenaline in his veins and her voice, subdued and quiet, in his head. Whispering words that he can't make out, that he can't understand.

It's no drop like he's ever done before. The Conn-Pod is hooked up to a very basic manual drop system through a series of cranes and pulleys. Nothing like the smooth mechanical drop of the glory days.

The suits are tight and unbreathable – that part familiar, at least – and Mako flashes him a nervous smile as they walk with heavy footsteps towards their respective sides of the machine.

“Preparing for neural handshake,” Tendo patches through the radio.

He mashes at the button and yells an affirmative response.

“You ready for this?” he says, and she kicks nervously at the edge of the pod.

“Anything you see in my head...” she begins, and he coughs a laugh.

“Same for you, too. It's been a while, all right, Mako?”

She grins. “Shouldn't this be more like riding a bike? Isn't that what they say?”

“Counting down,” Tendo chimes, and they prepare for the drift. As much as anyone can prepare for something like that.

“Hurts a little bit more than riding a bike,” he answers.

“Three... two... “

 

 

 

 _the drift is silence_ , he hears himself say, and the memories whir past in a blur. The movement of her wrist when she first shifts the umbrella, Yancy's last words, the last dream he had where the sheets had tangled around her bare legs and he had kissed the freckles dotting her shoulderblades;

she gasps, and they are in her head too – the streets of Tokyo unfolding like an enormous paper crane, intricate and layered, but then, his face passing in slow motion, smiling and wearing the tan from the welder's glasses he'd had in Alaska; Stacker, smiling; Stacker, tucking her into bed as a child; Stacker, teaching her how to throw her first punches against a heavy sandbag suspended from the ceiling;

_you can always find me... in the drift_

and her last words to him; and then, Raleigh, again; the hangar and Gipsy Danger; a low, throaty moan as she stretches underneath him, as her hand curls against his shoulder.

 

 

 

The force of the drift knocks them back in the machine, and they both grunt back into reality.

 _i can see into your head_ , he thinks, giddy with the rush of it. Still never used to it. Not even after however many sims, however many kills, however many years at the academy.

 _i can see into yours, too_ , she replies, and shouts a laugh. Or a command.

 

 

 

The Jaeger raises its hands and bows to its audience of suited businessmen, who don't respond.

 

 

 

“First attachment on the right side!”

 

Dima plunges its plasma cannon arm against one of the notched heads at its holster and postures itself in a fighting stance, the serrated saw arm sharp and harsh in the light of the hangar.

 

 

 

He laughs, and she shouts another command. They run through the roster of changeable plasma-cannon-bits on the right side of the Jaeger before running through the regular playbook of featured moves. Force, and punching arms, and shows of strength.

Marshal Hansen standing in the hangar deck with his arms crossed over his chest, the way Striker used to stand, his mouth pressed into a practiced flat expression but still beaming with old pride.

 

 

 

 

 

That night, even with no immediate news or pledges from the investors, Tendo insists on all the old traditions. Buys bottles of liquor and lines them up in the mess. Pours shots for everybody and blares hard house into the hangar.

The crew get beyond fucked up. Drink until they can't, dance off-rhythm to a music that's all beats. Laugh like they've only just discovered joy.

He sits with her in the corner, slowly making their way through the shots Tendo won't stop pouring. (The drunker he gets, the sloppier the pour.) And Raleigh can't stop touching her. Can't stop anchoring himself in her body. Misses the feel of her in his head, misses her even more than he did after the first time they drifted together.

He plays with the ends of her hair, brushes his fingers across the nape of her neck, and she tips another shot back, and shudders.

Turns to him with a curiously open expression and giggles.

“What's the matter?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “Nothing. You keep touching my hair.”

“You know what it's like. After the drift.”

She blinks up at him slowly. “No,” she says. “I don't.” Her arms slip around his waist and she leans her body against his. “Feels a little bit like the air is heavy against you?”

“Hey, hey!” Tendo barks, swaggering towards them. “What's this?”

Raleigh's halfway into some kind of a defensive remark, when Tendo nudges the neck of an open bottle at their shot glasses.

“Didn't we agree that the rules for tonight was that no one wakes up tomorrow without a hangover? If we're all falling into the Breach, then we're all falling into the Breach, you hear me?”

Mako laughs. “That doesn't make any sense.”

Tendo fills their glasses up anyway. Lifts the bottle by its neck and looks directly at her. “ _Kampai_!”

She lifts her shot glass in answer. “飲杯!” she returns, in stilted Cantonese.

Tendo grins. Leans down and kisses her on the cheek.

Raleigh's fingers tighten on the loops of her knit sweater, push against the soft skin of her waist.

Turning towards him, she brushes her mouth against his ear as she leans in to whisper, “Shh, he was just being nice.”

“I didn't say anything.”

She grins. “I'm in your head, remember?”

He bumps his forehead against hers, brushes his nose against hers, and when she exhales, it sounds closer to a breathy sigh. He hums and leans in, brushing his mouth against her pulse point. “Hi.”

Her teeth click with a laugh. “I thought this was supposed to get easier the more you did it.”

“Which part?”

She pushes at his shoulder with a hard shove. “Hey,” she says. “Watch it.”

“Want me to walk you back? To your... hallway?”

“Your hallway, too,” she replies.

“My room's not across from yours anymore,” he says. That part of the drift, too – the way memories seem to become more present, more recent; the way the brain finds it more difficult to pick out what's true from what's false, what's present from what's past, desire from truth.

“Oh,” she mouths. “That's right.”

“But if you tell me where your new room is, I could lead you back... to the... “

“Okay,” she says. “Finish your drink. And okay.”

He reaches for the shot, downs it with a wince. She reaches for his hand, and pulls him towards the door.

 

 

 

 

 

His shoulder knocks her against the wall when they round the corner down the last hallway towards her room. She's laughing too hard to get out any sentences, and the alcohol has left her face pink and flushed and her skin warm to the touch.

He can't stop touching her; has he mentioned that yet?

She grins at him, her eyes falling half-closed as she pulls him towards her. As his knee knocks against the wall, his body pinning her against it. Her hand lingers on his chest. Draws up the side of his neck to cup his cheek, the back of his head.

“I can hear what you're thinking,” she says.

“I know. You're not supposed to use that against me.”

“Drift pilot rules?”

He laughs. “Jaeger pilot rules, yeah.”

“Well, I should be allowed to,” she says, tilting her head back against the wall and narrowing her eyes at him. “Mako rules.”

“So go ahead,” he says. “Do your worst.”

She leans her face in close to his, her mouth hovering right over his, and doesn't move. Looks up at him and listens to the hard rasp of his breathing. “Why don't you do it?”

A game of chicken. She inches a little closer and then moves away again.

“What?”

“What you're thinking of doing.”

“Why don't you tell me what that is?”

She jabs his shoulder with the tip of her finger. “Your job to figure that out.”

He leans in close, imitates her earlier move. “It's more fun my way.”

In response, she kisses the tip of his nose.

 

 

 

Action, reaction;

somewhere, science has a string of words and symbols to explain the rules of bodies and motion.

 

 

 

 

 

What happens: his hand braces against the wall behind her as he leans forward, his mouth rough and wanting against hers. Her hand scratches at him over his shirt as she kisses back. As she angles her head and opens her mouth to him, groaning as his other hand settles on the small of her back to push her flush against him.

She pants a laugh as he knocks her back against the wall, pinning her there with his hips and his mouth. And then, there is only the feel of her hands pulling lightly at his hair, the strange sweet and liquored taste of her mouth and lines and lines of poetry running through his head.

“Thank you for walking me back,” she says and he smiles against her mouth. Brushes his hands underneath her t-shirt, skims the bare skin of her back. Listens to her sharp gasp when he scratches lightly along her side.

“Shh,” he says. “We're not there yet.”

She pushes back into his space, her knees nudging against his legs as he stumbles backward into the opposite wall. As she stands on her toes and kisses him back, her tongue sweeping into his mouth, her hands reaching underneath his shirt, her thumbs brushing against the jut of bone at his hips.

“You should come in with me.” He arches a brow – borrowing her gesture – and she laughs. “Not like that. Just sleeping.”

He nips at her bottom lip and she pouts.

She tries the handle of the door. It doesn't open.

“This isn't your room,” he says.

“It's...”

“It's about five rooms down the hall.” He grins, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back onto his heels. His voice pitched higher, then, when he imitates her, “I can see into your head, remember?”

She tries a scowl, and he answers with a laugh.

“Don't blame me because you have no sense of direction.”

She throws a light punch against his shoulder. Still hard enough to sting. “For that, I'm going to make you sleep on the inside.”

They head down the hallway another two or three feet when he stills, pulling at her hand to bring her closer, to press a soft kiss against her mouth. Gentler than the last few.

She's silent as they push their way into her room, as they throw themselves against the hard, flat surface of her mattress.

 

 

 

They fall asleep that way – her arms and legs splayed out, pushing him to sleep with his back to the wall, lying on his side – comfortable in their adjustments of space.

He nearly encroaches into her space in the middle of the night, and she rolls onto her back with a light snore, hand flying to knock soundly against his throat.

He retreats. His hand still cuved around hers.

 

 

 

They head into the boneslum in the morning and find a small cafe that dishes up breakfast the traditional way, metal carts rattling with dishes of steamed plates. There's too much food for the both of them but they eat as much as they can and hope to chase away the hangover.

She studiously avoids his gaze over the table. Pours them both cups of tea, pushes dumplings onto his plate. Says little. 

“We should talk,” he says, flagging down the waiter for a refill for their pot of tea.

She ducks her head. _last night was..._

He shakes his head. “Hey,” he says, and thinks of nudging her face up towards his with his knuckles under her chin. Doesn't. “You know that it wasn't just... I wanted to. Did you?”

She blushes. “I've read about similar circumstances in the old reports...”

“That's not what I asked you.”

The waiter returns. Sets the teapot against the table with a heavy noise, equidistant between the two of them.

_can't you still hear me?_

“I want you to...tell me. The drift is just... it's silence, that's all. Shouldn't let it be anything more.”

She peers down at the dish of tripe. “What I want...” she begins, haltingly. “I want you to stay.”

He releases a breath through his teeth. “Well, I'm here.” His hand finds hers on the tabletop.

“And will you leave again?”

His gaze falls on their joined hands, searching for an answer. “Mako...”

She shakes her head. “No,” she says and her voice tremors. Clearing her throat, she tries for a more assured tone. More controlled. “You either stay or you go. That's it.”

“Then... I won't. I'd go with you. Anywhere.”

She splits her dumpling with her chopsticks, handing him a half. “Raleigh...”

“You have to know I'm trying.”

She takes a bite of her dumpling half and chews thoughtfully. “I do. I do know.”

“Then why...?”

“よらばたいじゅのかげ.”

“And what do you need?”

She sets her chopsticks neatly on top of her plate and refills the teacups. “You,” she answers.

 

 

 

(and what is the equation when distance is removed? What is the effect of space on whether or not he will decide to run?

And of his heart, what of that?)

 

 

 

“I'd follow you anywhere,” he repeats. “Believe me.”

She hums. “Faith is...difficult. When there is evidence, you can show a history. Faith is unpredictable. Erratic.”

“i know, but...”

She leans her weight against him. “For you, I am trying.”

 

 

 

The question he thinks of asking: _and what do you believe?_

He wants to tell her everything about him. Wants to explain all the flashes of him in the drift that never seem to make any sense, or make sense with the person that he is now. Wants to tell her that he has taught himself not to believe in much, but that, again and again, he would still choose to believe in her.

He says he'd follow her anywhere, and what he means – for where hasn't he followed her? Onto the floors of oceans, into breaches between parts of the earth, into memory and fragile histories – is love; what he means is she is greater than anything he could ever be; what he means is _you make me feel like a kid looking up at the stars all over again_.

 

 

 

 

 

It's three days after the drift that he has the dream. She's lying on his bed, and it's late summer, the scent of cherry blossoms overwhelming his room. They don't usually bloom past the spring, but here, they're everywhere. Growing outside his windows and reaching with long limbs into his room. Spreading flowers everywhere.

She's lying on his bed, reading a book, wearing nothing.

_Mako._

_Shh_ , she replies, turning a page. _I have to review these reports._

So he crawls up between her legs. Presses kisses to the inside of her knee, to the jut of her ankle, inching up along each leg until he can hear the tremor in her breathing.

 _That isn't fair_ , she says, and he nudges her open with his fingers, slowly rubbing circles against her skin and watching her hips begin to move with him, listening as her words die down into syllables. _I really do need to..._ \- here, her words hitch on a gasp as he pushes a finger into her slick heat - _get work done._

Outside, the sun is bright and overbearing, white light streaming patterns across the floor. Raleigh pushes himself closer, pressing kisses to her open cunt, brushing at her clit with his nose as he spreads her with his fingers and licks at her. Tastes the sharpness of her against his tongue.

Her hips nearly surge off the bed, rocking desperately against him as the book crashes noisily to the floor, her hands tightening against the bedsheets.

 _I hate you_ , she hisses through her teeth, and he smiles, pushing another finger inside her and curling them, fluttering them against her. She gasps, and her hands reach forward to plant themselves in his hair. Pushing him even closer against her. “ _Oh_!”

He can hear how close she is, and as much as he wants to spread it out, make it torturous and slow, he's so hard he can barely think straight.

“ _Please_ ,” she gasps and he pumps his fingers, flicking his tongue against her at the same time, watching as her head slams back against the mattress and her hips rock against him.

 

 

 

He wakes up in her bed and finds himself hard and aching, his body pressed up against hers in sleep.

She sleeps on, a touch of color staining her cheeks.

He tries to slip out of bed as quietly as possible, toeing his way to the bathroom.

 

 

 

 

 

The fifth night after their drift, he's bunking in his own room when it happens again.

He doesn't know where the hell they are this time around – a library of some kind? Bookshelves and oversized armchairs laid out by enormous glass windows overlooking an empty field – but she's stepping out from one of the stacks with a pile of books in hand, wearing nothing but one of his sweaters with a pencil held between her teeth. Her hair longer, lying loose and falling near the middle of her back.

She doesn't kiss him.

Instead, he goes to help her with the stack of books and she reaches down between them to cup him through his pants.

And the books fall to the floor when she kneels, when she strokes him in her hand and pulls his pants down past his hips, when she takes him in her mouth and his hands find their way into her hair.

Her mouth is warm and wet, and she hums around him as she works him with her tongue, her hand moving in tandem with her mouth. _fuck, mako_ , he grunts because someone could catch them here, couldn't they, out here in the open... wherever they are?

She looks up at him from beneath her lashes and he nearly comes right then.

She pulls her mouth free with a soft, wet noise and stands then, the sweater shifting higher with her movements.

 _i want you_ , she says, guiding him to brush against her. Grinding herself over him for a few moments.

He pushes her over one of the tables, guiding himself into her as her fingers scrabble for purchase against the edge of the table.

 _please_ , she says, and he pushes into her as slowly as he can manage. There's a hollow noise as her head bumps against the table. And once he's completely inside her, he stills for a moment.

She pants, grinding her hips back against him, trying to drive him deeper. _come on._

 

 

 

She shudders awake in bed and finds herself alone. Searches for the warmth of his body and remembers too late that he decided to sleep elsewhere. Recalls the sight of him from the memory that wasn't, the muscles in his neck taut as his head fell back, the low rasp of his moans, the way his short fingernails brushed against her scalp when she took him in her mouth.

She groans, kicking the covers off and reaching for one of the budget reports on her nightstand.

 

 

 

 

 

The news comes via the old Sydney Shatterdome gossip network: a joint venture between three of the Pacific nations for a trial five-year term. With caveats.

The list of offshoot demands in order to secure the funding is off-loaded onto Tendo's desk and then hers – clipboards and binders upon binders of suggested budgets rerouting funding to unnecessary concerns. Defense research and men building war chests for themselves.

Tendo wrinkles his nose at the business. “They're going to expect results,” he says.

Marshal Hansen frowns, pulling at the cuff of his jacket. “Stacker'd say it's war times.”

“But it isn't. Not anymore.”

His jaw squares. “It's a different kind.”

Mako steps forward, looking at him directly. “What you're asking us to do...”

“We're keeping the Jaeger program alive. That's what Stacker'd want. The rest of it... we find ways around it.”

In the hangar, the war clock is stopped. Covered over with tarp.

“Marshal, I think this is a bad idea.”

She nods her head. “I agree, sir.”

Marshal Hansen turns his head towards Striker's old launch pad, his face clouding over. “If you can't do something right, you do something stupid. We'll get the capital to launch the Mach VI, keep us functional and we'll go from there.”

“And if they ask about the other things?” Tendo says. “What'll we do, then?”

“We tell 'em to go fuck themselves. It's the least we can do after everything they've done. Bunch o' turncoats.” He turns to her, shoves his hands deep in his pockets. “Miss Mori, I'd understand if you...”

She shakes her head. “No. I am committed. To this Shatterdome, to the preservation of the Jaeger program.”

His shoulders sag and, for a moment, the exhaustion shows. “Good to have you.”

She salutes first. Tendo follows. Raleigh last.

The last showing of the PPDC to one of the last Marshals.

 

 

 

 

 

She avoids him for days. As much as she can, anyway.

Doesn't stop their bodies from seeking each other out. Doesn't stop them from colliding into each other in the hallways, from taking wrong routes and ending up at each other's doors, from dreaming and reaching for bodies that aren't there.

The fifth time he runs into her – and full on collision this time, her notes and folders scattering like leaves across the tiled floor – he huffs as he scrambles around, trying to collect the loose papers, and says, “We need to talk about this.”

She doesn't reply. Just shuffles her papers into some semblance of order again.

“I know that you know what I'm talking about. The dreams.”

She colors.

“If we don't talk about it, it's going to affect the drift. So we should...clear the air.”

“Okay.” She shifts to sit on the floor, setting the folders in a neat pile beside her. “So...clear it.”

He coughs a laugh. “Right here? That's...direct.”

She doesn't turn from his gaze. Instead, hers lingers on him, waiting for him to speak. “I have heard of similar stories happening to training pilots at the academy.” He moves to take a seat beside her.

He nods. “You just have to get it out of your system.”

“All right,” she says, licking her lips. “And...how do you...?”

He flashes to seeing her in his bed, undressed and asleep, curling around him, the blankets draped over her lower body, his hand resting on the open expanse of her back -

“Well,” he says. “Yancy and I never - “ He laughs. “This was never anything we had to deal with.”

She pages through a few sheets of the file, listens to the rustle of the paper. “What is there to say about it?”

“I'm sure it's because we were in each other's heads, and...it just makes sense that we would...”

She covers her mouth with her hand with a soft laugh. “You can't avoid saying it forever.”

“It makes sense that we would jump to... those situations. It's...natural.”

Her brow arches, and he colors.

“I mean, we're a long way from the academy, but there's got to be a shrink somewhere, right?”

“You wouldn't see one.”

“You know that for sure, huh?”

She runs a hand through her hair. “Yes.”

“So no shrinks. How do we fix this?”

Her eyes fall on the line of his mouth. “We did as you said. We talked about it. Surely this will help our minds manage the space. A temporary solution, perhaps, but what other options do we have?”

Questions of space. Of weight. Inertia. He lets his weight shift, knocks his side against her shoulder. He's back to asking the same questions and hoping for new answers.

“So problem solved?”

She smiles, gathering her papers into her arms and standing. “We'll see.” Her hand brushes against his shoulder. Trails down the side of his arm. Squeezes his wrist.

“So I'll see you around? You won't just go avoiding me again?”

She frowns. “I wasn't. Tendo and I were busy with the latest revisions. But, yes. Dinner in the mess. 2100.”

He gives her a crooked salute. “ではその時に, 眞子さま.”

She nods her head and starts down the hall.

 

 

 

 

 

There's a knock on the door a few minutes after 0300 and his arm rattles the post of the bed, calls for his brother.

Scrubs his hand across his face and pulls on a pair of pants, heaving open the door and wincing at the bright white light that cuts into the dark.

She slips in through the small space, leans the door shut. “I know it's late,” she says, and he feels like he's still asleep, like she was the white light and the light made her, like he is still trapped somewhere with the memory of his brother and sleep, and she is come to wake him.

He chooses not to say any of that and hopes it didn't bleed through into her earshot. Rubs at his eyes again and hopes to clear his head.

“Did something happen?” he asks, and his voice sounds rougher than usual, even to his own ears.

She takes two steps to approach, her hands clenching and opening at her sides as she searches for the words. He doesn't think, lifts his arm and closes the distance between them, lets his arm rest as a weight across her shoulders.

Her head fits against the crook of his shoulder, her breath hot against his collarbone as she sags and cries.

“What's the matter?” he asks, and she shakes with sobs. His hand rubs circles against her back and he braces her up against him.

“Nothing,” she says. “I don't know.”

He strokes her hair, and her fingers dig into the skin of his back. “Whatever it is, you know that I'm here, right?” He leans down, his mouth brushing against the crown of her head, against her forehead. Kisses it, whispers words that aren't, prayers to absent gods.

Her head knocks against his shoulder, and her body stops shaking. Grows still from the sobs. “Don't leave,” she says. “Don't go.”

His hands brace underneath her chin, lift it to look up at him. “Hey,” he says, and she closes her eyes. There are words spilling out of him – Japanese he doesn't understand and has no context for, Japanese that begins to sound like lyrics of a song, that he drops to a hushed whisper and whispers against her ear like a comfort – and he watches her face, hoping it's what she needs to hear. What she wants to hear. “ _yo no naka wa asukagawa ni mo naraba nare kimi to ware to ga naka shi taezu wa_.”

Her nails are sharp against his neck and then she pulls him towards her. Hard. His mouth knocking at hers off-center, stumbling with the weight of both of their bodies and all of the empty space of the room.

Her mouth is bruising, demanding against his. Desperate and wanting.

He says, “Hey.” And she pulls away and her eyes are exceptionally dark, still shining with tears. “You don't have to...”

Her hand finds his, leading him towards the bed. Pulling him down on top of her. His weight pinning her against the mattress. His weight heavy against her frame.

He tries to brace himself up, and she wraps a hand around his wrist. Whispers _no_ , whispers _i like to know that you're here_.

And isn't this a question of reality, more than anything else? That her body is here, that her body is real, that his mouth can find hers and taste the salt of her skin on his tongue, that his mouth can meet hers and find new direction?

 

 

 

There is too much to strip away. There are her clothes, and her sorrows; his griefs, and her fears; his transience and her rootedness. There are memories and dreams and the drift that falls to the floor next, and then it is only that he is seeing her for the first time.

He changes the tempo, makes their pace slow and exploratory. His hands span her ribcage, her hips, the swell of her breasts, hovering over her sternum to feel the rapidfire beat of her heart in her chest.

 _i could never leave you_ , he thinks, and she scratches lines along his sides, presses kisses to the hollow of his throat, scrapes her teeth along his collarbone.

Marking each other the way explorers mark maps.

Here are monsters; here is the river; here is the path you guide by.

She wraps a leg around his, drawing him closer to her. And when he pushes into her, she keeps him still with her leg around her waist. Makes him stay that way for a moment. Connected to her. Their breathing in sync, their bodies leaning against each other.

His fingers tighten against her back, and he murmurs her name against her skin.

_and are you leaving?_

He tries to keep his pace slow, tries to draw out the noise of her moans, the soft rhythm to her breathing, the urgency -

_and will you_

_stay?_

The last, she whispers. The last, lost between their bodies, between their mouths, the way secrets disappear into memory and become truth, the way wars disappear into history and become stale.

The way bodies disappear into space.

The way space becomes a hollow.

The way hollows hold the shape of whatever they are lacking.

“Stay?” she says. “Can I...?”

And his arm braces around her back, keeps her tethered to him. Even after they've fallen asleep.

 

 

 

 

 

Their morning in is quiet.

He brings her milk tea the morning after. 三小, just the way she likes it. Leaves it on the nightstand with a Japanese newspaper fished from Tendo's desk.

She doesn't say much. Thumbs through the newspaper and sips slowly at her cup of tea.

He thinks of a pond. Of ripples.

“Are we going to...?”

She turns to look at him. Passes the cup of tea into his hands and watches him as he takes a sip. “Not yet,” she answers. “After breakfast.”

The sheets pool around her waist and she sits up against the wall, naked from the waist up. Like an old painting in a museum or something.

He hands the paper cup back to her, the heat lingering on his palms.

“We'll talk?”

“If you think we need to.”

The newspaper rustles as she turns the page.

 

 

 

 

 

They are scheduled to make a public appearance with the Mach VI on the Hong Kong coastline as the official unveiling of the new program.

He finds her in the hangar before they're scheduled to report to the Conn-Pod for the drop. Standing with her clipboard pressed to her chest and staring up at the gleaming mass of metal. “What are you looking at?”

“I keep expecting to see her.” The clipboard rattles. “Gipsy.”

The punch lands, and he makes a shaky exhale.

“You feel her sometimes?”

The echo of pilots in their Jaegers, or Jaegers in their pilots. Sometimes he wakes with phantom aches deep in his chest, and hears the whir of the dying reactor.

He shakes his head to clear the thought. “She's hard to forget.”

He fingers his dogtags, listens to the soft noise they make. “And her?” Mako asks. “How did you feel about her?”

Dima Omega – not a restoration, but a full-blown new creation by two of the people he feels closest to in the world. The moment they connected him into her was like no other moment in his life. Excepting maybe the first time they placed him in Gipsy.

“It was... satisfactory?”

“Mako,” he says, nudging her clipboard down. “You built her from the ground up. It was more than just...” - he imitates her expression - “satisfactory.”

“You felt her spirit?”

He reaches for her hand, squeezes her fingers. “I felt her soul.”

He looks up at the machine, still smelling strongly of new grease and motor oil. A new Mach VI, a new soul for the program. A new beginning.

 

 

 

 

 

They step into the pod. They drop into the Jaeger.

 _neural handshake at 100% and holding_ , Tendo chimes, and Raleigh hears it twice. Once in his own voice, once in Mako's voice.

“You ready for this?” he asks. “To see her take her first steps?”

She opens and closes her fist, and the Jaeger does the same.

“Let's go,” she says.

The Jaeger's steps are heavy, moving through the streets with weight and resonance and a surprising lightness of step.

He looks over at her in the suit, thinks _you look good._

The crowds on the street part to let them through, cheer and throw rolls of crepe and ribbon at them. Scream and yell and celebrate. The last clamor of a people that survived.

 

 

 

 

 

Herc sits with them that night for dinner. Lukewarm food on metal trays, fresh MREs received from base and some contraband from the streets.

No more government funding, no more fresh produce.

“You did a good show today,” he says, stabbing at his mashed potatoes with a plastic fork.

“You think that'll be enough to get us what we need?” Tendo asks.

“It'll be enough to get us going,” Marshal Hansen says, and Raleigh pushes food around aimlessly on his tray. “And that's all we need. To get going.” Herc's smile is small. A dying thing. “Hard to stop a Jaeger once it's moving.”

Tendo hums around his bite of food.

“Things are going to change around here, aren't they?”

Herc looks up and meets his gaze. “Hard to keep things from changing, no matter how much you want to. But this? The Shatterdome, the Jaeger program? This was Stacker's, and I'll die before I'll let 'em turn it into something he'd sooner piss on than...”

Mako sets an empty rice bowl in front of him. Pours the tea with a careful, practiced motion.

“Sir,” she says, and Tendo bows his head, recognizing the gesture for what it is.

“Sir,” Tendo says.

“虎穴に入らずんば虎子を得ず。”

Raleigh knows Herc doesn't speak Japanese. Never tried learning Cantonese or Mandarin either, no matter how long he's been out here in Hong Kong. But the old man bows his head, and takes a long sip from the cup of warmed-over tea.

They've all learned so much over the war.

 

 

 

(And weeks later, he will sit with her in the empty mess. Will prepare the small, cheap ceramic teapot he'd bought a few days ago at the bargain store near the base and stuff it with too much loose tea, and pour the hot water in too quickly, or, at least, too much of it so that it bubbles through the lid and makes a mess and spills across the tablecloth when he pours.

The cups are wiped clean. Chinese teacups, a soft white color.

He pours, and the tea draws a light tan line against the tablecloth. She smiles and laughs at him.

“Thought this was supposed to be a high tea,” she says. “Where are the crumpets? The...saucers?”

He grits his teeth and tries to steady his hand. Pours for her first. Then him. Pushes the tea cup with two hands towards her. “Mako,” he says. “I wanted to...do this for you.”

She smiles, takes a sip from her teacup. Her hand stretching forward to ruffle his hair.)

 

 

 

 

 

He moves his bag into her room. Begins to occupy her space. Confines himself to as small a corner as possible.

(There are missteps to be made here, and he doesn't want to make them. There are no words for whatever it is they have cultivated here. It is the ocean, too-deep and mystifying, even if he knows the pull of it. Can feel the tide dragging him where he needs to be, recognizes the pressure in its depths for what it is.

Named or not, he knows it for its power.)

And there is one night when he is too exhausted from trial runs and searching for new pilots, from running tests and being tested on, from trying to make himself fit in a place that once let him get away with whatever he wanted, when he falls into her bed with little more than a grunt. Reaches out and runs his fingers through her hair.

Falls asleep and says _i love you i'm sorry i'm so tired_.

Snores and turns in his sleep and says it again.

_i love you_

Like a revelation that was always waiting for a mouth to speak it.

 

 

 

 

 

The PPDC decides to deploy Dima Omega on peacetime missions only. Wreckage and recovery. Clearing away rubble from disaster sites, clearing away kaiju blue, testing for any excess amounts of radiation.

Sydney was the first. A trial mission. Manila, next.

He hasn't packed anything yet, and she has her shoes and her suitcase lined up neatly by the door. Everything prepared for the day of deployment.

That night, they spend their evening meal sitting in the hangar. Watching the crewmen clean and run maintenance on the Jaeger's parts. “She's still so impressive, isn't she?”

“That's the thing,” he says, taking a pull off a contraband beer. “You think you'll get used to it. Being amazed by how...massive they are. How impressive they are. I never got used to it with Gipsy. Every time, it kind of felt like the first.”

She smiles. “Let's go up.”

He raises his eyebrows. “What are you...?”

She stands, leaves the trays of food there, and pulls him to his feet. They race up the catwalk stairs alongside the Jaeger. Winded and out of breath by the time they reach its chest, she slowly clambers onto the machine. Sits on the broad metal expanse of its shoulder.

“Come on,” she says. He takes a few cautious steps onto the ledge and she helps him the rest of the way.

They sit with their feet dangling off the edge, kicking it against the front plate of its shoulder. “This is...very high.”

“Oh,” she says. “Come on. Big strong pilot.”

He inhales sharply, looks out over the open space of the hangar. One of the crewmen below shouts a swear word in Cantonese that echoes off the ceiling.

“When the Marshal and I first started the Jaeger restoration program, we would sit like this sometimes. On the late nights, when everyone had left and you couldn't think anymore... sitting up here, on its shoulder? It felt like you could hear them. The sound of their thoughts, the way they breathed and moved. Like you were feeding ghosts.”pulling

He hums. “With Gipsy, you were.”

She smiles. “Gipsy was... more than another restoration project.”

“Was she?”

She knocks her shoulder against him lightly. “Don't make me throw you off the Jaeger.”

“Oh, we're being serious now.”

“Yes,” she says, laughing. “Very serious.”

 

 

 

 

 

It's their last night in Hong Kong before the deployment. They sit on the upper balcony of the base, looking out into the crammed pockets of the city, full of people and the noise of car horns and tacky neon lighting.

He has Tendo's gift in hand – a bottle of sake, a small note about remembering old friends – and they sneak up to sit and stare out into the sky, the delicate fabric of stars beginning to push through past the smog and the clouds.

She's already had a few cups of liquor, her face pinking, and when she steps out into the cool air, she sighs. “It's beautiful,” she says.

He nods, resting the bottle against the cement floor.

“I wanted to do something for you,” she says. “As a...” Her voice trails off, the thought incomplete. Unfinished.

There are cups fished from the bottom of her bag. Chipped teacups from the old pantry. She lays them out in a line on the balcony, takes the sake bottle and pours the cups halfway full.

“I'm inside your head,” he says, and she nods.

“I know.”

Takes one of the cups and takes three sips before passing it to him; goes down the line and does the same.

He follows her.

She reaches for his hand, plants a kiss against his palm. He leans in instead, pressing a soft kiss to her mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

There are memorials built. An artist commissioned out of Kathmandu builds scale replicas of the heads of the fallen Jaegers. And with the PPDC's funding, they have them set and displayed in various cities throughout the Pacific area.

The replica of Cherno Alpha installed in Vladivostok. Tacit Ronin in Lima. Coyote Tango in Tokyo. Romeo Blue in Anchorage. Crimson Typhoon, an expansive monument in Hong Kong.

Gipsy Danger's head they keep in Manila, in commemoration of the fight against Hundun. There it sits, above all the small fishing huts, on a small raised platform where it rises up out of the water.

 

 

 

They visit on one of the holidays Marshal Hansen forces them to take. Take a boat to the monument and clamber up to the top of Gipsy's head, sit and look out at the clear blue of the water.

He looks at her, at the tide lapping against the base of Gipsy's neck.

She takes a pull from a small flask and passes it to him. Sweet plum wine.

He leans back and recites a poem, sings it to the melody of a Bon Jovi song:

_waga koi wa_  
 _yukue mo shirazu_  
 _hate mo nashi_  
 _au o kagiri to_  
 _omou bakari zo_

She laughs, presses a fist to her mouth.

Gipsy laughs, too. Sings a song in their heads. Sea shanties, stories of children learning to fall and stand again.

He kisses her and it tastes like sea.

Underneath them, Gipsy rocks with the tide, with the noise of her own heartbeat.

**Author's Note:**

> The poems, in order of appearance:
> 
> 1\. "The Old Pond" by Basho: with multiple translations, but I chose to use the one by Hass:
> 
> The old pond--  
> a frog jumps in,  
> sound of water.
> 
> 2\. "Winter Solitude" by Basho: the Hass translation.
> 
> Winter solitude--  
> in a world of one color  
> the sound of wind.
> 
> 3\. "1112. Winter" by Masaoka Shiki: the Steven D. Carter translation:
> 
> Time and time again,  
> "How deep is the snow now?"  
> \--I keep on asking.
> 
> 4\. "Winter Morning" by Fujiwara no Teika: the Carter translation:
> 
> After a full year  
> of gazing out, one morning  
> I open my door--  
> to a thin snowfall, frozen--  
> the far edge of loneliness.
> 
> 5\. [untitled] by Mitsune
> 
> This love I feel--  
> I know not where it will take me,  
> or its final end;  
> but I know that to meet you  
> is all I can think about.
> 
>  
> 
> As someone who doesn't speak Japanese, I tried to be fairly thorough in my research in what I used for authenticity purposes, but people do make mistakes, so please forgive them. 
> 
> The tea ceremony is based off of Chinese wedding customs; the sake ceremony off of Japanese wedding customs. Tea ceremonies also have significant meaning in Japanese culture, but the ceremony, as far as I can tell, is much more involved and intricate than what Raleigh does in the scene in the fic.


End file.
